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November 27, 2017

"Black Mirror: Magic in Art" exhibition!

Lindsey Bull "Conductor"

Britishfolk: if you can get yourself to Arts University Bournemouth's gallery, do, for there you'll find the mouth-watering "Black Mirror: Magic in Art" exhibition. The show features fourteen artists whose work focuses on occult imagery and techniques, including Phantasmaphile favorites Jesse Bransford, Lindsey Bull, Paula Rego, and Suzanne Treister. Full details:

Black Mirror: Magic in ArtNovember 23 - February 1, 2018

Curated by Dominic ShepherdThe Gallery, AUB

Black Mirror: Magic in Art explores the influences and roles of magic, enchantment and the occult in contemporary art and how they function as aesthetic, conceptual and political forces. Through a multi-disciplined curatorial approach of 2D, 3D, film, video and performance art, Black Mirror will showcase the work of fourteen internationally recognised artists.

Modernism was built in the late nineteenth century, we live within its legacy; the same period created the foundations of modern magic as it is practised and understood today. The magical and occult have been much marginalised within the scholarship of twentieth century art, seen in opposition to enlightenment and progressive values. This exhibition challenges this premise, taking fourteen artists whom draw on the magical to propose that enchantment and occult are intertwined with contemporary issues.

Covering a period over the last thirty years a magical aesthetic is intrinsic to an engagement with environmentalism; feminism; gender; post-digital; neo-liberalism and nationalism. Black Mirror is an exhibition where the magical, occult and enchanted are activated as progressive forces that question and direct the flux in this uncertain age.

Dominic Shepherd is Dorset based Artist and Senior Lecturer in MA Fine Art at the Arts University Bournemouth. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art and graduated with both a BA and MA in Fine Art. Dominic is a prize winner of the 2004 John Moores Prize, a prestigious prize that showcases avant-garde paintings. In 2008, he undertook a research fellowship at AUB and in 2015, he was made an Associate Professor at the University.

He has exhibited internationally with an extensive record of group and solo shows in London, New York, Berlin and Los Angeles and is represented by Charlie Smith London. He has also been included in and written for, various publications.

Dominic is presently the co-coordinator (with Judith Noble and Jesse Bransford) of the Black Mirror Network that explores the influence and role of Enchantment, the occult and magic in modernist and contemporary art.

There is also an accompanying catalog available with contributions by Associate Professor Dominic Shepherd, Willem de Bruin and Professor Emma Hunt.